


A Mile In Your Shoes

by raendown



Series: Rare Pair Bingo 2019 [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-02
Updated: 2019-06-02
Packaged: 2020-04-06 14:26:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19064506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raendown/pseuds/raendown
Summary: When one of his brother's half-finished experiments switches Hashirama in to his wife's body and her in to his, only Tobirama can help them both get back in to the right skin. Or he would if they could figure out where in the village he's disappeared to.





	A Mile In Your Shoes

**Author's Note:**

> For the Naruto Rare Pair Bingo - Body Swap Prompt

“Oh. That doesn’t feel quite like I thought it would.” Hashirama stared down at his chest with both eyebrows raised and tried to figure out if he had enjoyed that sensation or not. For scientific purposes – brother would be so proud – he swatted at the heavy breast once more and watched the silk covered flesh jiggle.

“Husband,” Mito’s warning voice sounded a lot less terrifying when it was delivered in his own deep voice. When he looked up he had to bite his lip to keep from laughing. Was that what he looked like when he was trying to intimidate people? He supposed he understood now why some people had such a hard time taking him seriously.

“Sorry,” he murmured. “I was just curious. The noises you make- I thought it would feel…nicer?”

“Can we discuss our bedroom activities another time? We need to figure out what happened. And how to reverse it. As much as I love your body I am not interested in keeping it as my own.”

His wife narrowed his own eyes at him and Hashirama bit his lip again.

At least this whole debacle was not his fault – for once. No, this time it had been his wife that picked up an innocuous looking sheet of paper only to have it ignite with a burst of chakra and before either of them could react they both found their consciousness shoved in to another body that was not their own. When they eventually found their way back to normal he was absolutely going to tease her for this. No retribution she might think up could possibly sway him from the opportunity to hang it over her head that _she_ had been the purveyor of chaos for once, not him. It was simply too good to pass up.

For now though he could agree to focus on finding their way out of this situation. The whole reason they had entered Tobirama’s home in the first place was to find him and since it was his day off this seemed as good a place as any to start looking. Neither of them could have been expected to guess that the papers so messily strewn across the kotatsu would be so dangerous. Or active. Apparently he was not home, however, or else he most certainly would have come running out of whatever corner he had buried himself in to chastise them for touching his things again.

Hashirama wasn’t entirely sure why Mito insisted that no one should know of their predicament. If this body was good enough for her then it was good enough for him, he was far from ashamed to borrow it and he had already mentally sworn not to damage it. But if it made his beloved wife more comfortable then surely it wouldn’t cause too much trouble for them to conceal this odd little adventure from anyone outside of themselves and the one man who might help them fix it.

Of course, those were the intentions they headed out with when they stepped outside the house and headed for the next first place they thought Tobirama might be. Problems cropped up immediately when Mito turned her head and looked down at Hashirama waddling around in her own body.

“What are you doing?” she hissed. “You’re making me look like a duck with three left feet. Walk properly!”

“But this is how I always walk!” Hashirama paused and looked down at himself in confusion.

“Have a little dignity. My walk is much more proper. The way you walk is fine for a man but right now you are _not_ a man. Try to step more lightly, shorten your stride, and for the love of the sea please straighten my shoulders.” The pained look in his own eyes encouraged Hashirama to at least try to follow her directions.

After pausing to take stock of the body he was currently inhabiting and stepping out to try again he sighed, his voice coming out as a low whine he had never heard from her tone before. “This is hard.”

“Well of course it is,” Mito replied in a tone much more patient now that she could see he was trying. “Women carry their center of balance much differently than men.”

“Oh. I didn’t know that.”

“It’s the hips. You don’t have to worry about pushing anything out from between your hips.”

“Ah.” Hashirama dropped the subject with a shudder. Childbirth was natural and beautiful – but only when it was happening to someone else and he didn’t have to imagine it happening to himself. The possibility seemed all too realistic while he was trapped in this body and he really didn’t want to think about that.

It took a while but eventually Mito was able to coach him in to at least a passable approximation of her graceful walk. Taking such tiny steps was actually quite frustrating and it gave him the impression that he wasn’t getting anywhere but it made her feel better so he soldiered on like a good husband and tottered down the street while they worked on the next challenge: apparently he smiled too much. And conversely she didn’t smile enough.

Seeing his own smile and knowing that underneath it Mito was fairly burning with embarrassment to act so ‘frivolous and whimsical’ made it very difficult to keep his own expression calm and poised as she would have were they each wearing their own skin. Hashirama was wary of biting his tongue since it was actually _her_ tongue and he didn’t want her to be sore when they switched back but he didn’t know what else to do. Clenching his fists would only make it look like his wife was angry and on the war path again. He didn’t want to frighten any of the innocent citizens passing them by.

When they arrived at the Tower only to have a passing file clerk inform them that Tobirama hadn’t been seen all day Hashirama looked over to see one of his own eyes twitching in a way that looked less threatening on him and more like he was battling a loose eyelash. Before his wife could show the world what it looked like when “Senju Hashirama” lost his temper he laid a hand on her arm and cleared his throat, preparing to do the best impression work of his life.

“Thank you Tora-kun. Should you happen to see him please ask him to find us. Good day.” Whether or not he did a good job at imitating Mito’s poise – and he thought he did fairly well – it was best to make their exit before anything else could be said.

“Of course Mito-sama, Hokage-sama.” The clerk bowed to each of them and respectfully stepped away to pass the word on.

Hashirama steered his wife away as she so often did for him, one gentle hand on his own arm and the other trying to form that stately wave he always saw her do. A few murmured words served as a proper farewell, although he winced when he remembered that Mito _never_ mumbled, but they were back outside a few moments later and from the distracted look on the face beside him he was fairly sure his wife hadn’t even noticed that part. Strange, considering she usually noticed everything.

Blinking around himself as they walked along to the next place on the metaphorical list, Hashirama made a point of really looking for the first time.

“Wow,” he breathed. “I never realized…” Mito paused the incoming temper tantrum in favor of curiosity.

“Never realized what?”

“You can see so much better than I can. Everything is in so much detail from so far away! I…never realized that my eyes were getting so bad. Do you think I should start wearing glasses?” He looked up at her with a pout that cleared when he saw her frowning at his lips.

Once he had shuffled his face around in to a more proper expression Mito hummed thoughtfully. “I think glasses would suit you very well. Now that you mention it, however, I believe you are correct. I can usually read the market signs from here. Do not say a thing about this to your brother when we see him, not until after we have been returned to ourselves. This has gone on long enough already and I refuse to be trapped in this form for any longer than necessary by a beast who thinks only of his experiments.”

“Tobi isn’t a beast,” Hashirama protested mildly.

“And do not call him Tobi while you wear my lips.”

It was a close call but Hashirama managed not to break out in to a fit of giggles. He could only imagine the revenge she would seek if he did something so unsightly in her body while they were still in the public eye. When they set off towards the training fields he had to remind himself to step lightly and not lumber along as he usually would.

Thankfully the paths to the training fields were empty but when they arrived Tobirama did not appear to be using any of them. Both of them were slowly running out of places to look. After making sure he wasn’t bothering the gate guards again and peeking in on Touka there really wasn’t anywhere else obvious to look except his laboratory – which, to be fair, should have been the first place they checked. Yet that too yielded no results. Once they made sure that the building was sealed behind them to prevent any dangerous accidents Hashirama crossed his arms with a befuddled look.

“Has he disappeared in to thin air?” he wondered out loud. The possibility was one that used to wake him from recurring nightmares when Tobirama first revealed his work on the hiraishin. Sometimes it still did.

“Of course not,” Mito replied waspishly. He didn’t like his own voice when it was angry, he decided. “He has to be somewhere. Where else can we look? Somewhere that we wouldn’t expect him to be.”

“Maybe he took his students out to eat somewhere? He does that sometimes, I think.”

“Husband, you are a _genius_.” Mito turned to him with shining eyes that certainly did not suit her but he let that go by without comment and reveled in her praise. It wasn’t often someone called him a genius. He wasn’t stupid by any means but it was hard to shine brighter than Tobirama in the mental arts, harder still since the Nara had joined the village.

Together they turned back towards the village center. By the time they had marched up and down to peek their noses in to what felt like every restaurant in the whole country Hashirama was pretty sure he would be walking like this for the rest of his life, steps tiny and shoulders straight, expression demure for fear of one eyebrow out of place angering the man-trapped-woman at his side. At least watching Mito force herself to relax enough to lumber along like he usually did was enough entertainment to keep his mind away from how badly his feet hurt. How did she stand walking in these terrible shoes?

“I don’t get it. He has to be somewhere!” Ironically they _had_ run in to Tobirama’s students eventually but he hadn’t been with them. None of them had seen him all day.

“Perhaps there is someone else we can ask,” Mito’s suggestion had Hashirama perking up with excitement only to force himself back down from where he’d been about to leap in to the air with a whoop of excitement.

“That’s it! Madara was supposed to be working on the rotation schedules with him for the new ANBU recruits. Maybe Tobi said something to him!”

Mito didn’t seem to enjoy his idea judging by the look of extreme apathy he could see stamped all over his own face. Which was weird. He was pretty sure he’d never look so unenthused by anything before in his life but hopefully he would never have to see it again. If the gods were inclined to smile on him then Madara would have at least some inkling of where they could go looking for his missing brother and solve this out of body experience.

Luckily his wife did not try to stop him, willing by now to try almost anything if it would get them both back to the skins they were supposed to be occupying. Hashirama led them both away from the marketplace towards the Uchiha district. When they arrived she insisted on walking ahead of him while he murmured directions in her ear since it would look strange to any onlookers if their clan head’s best friend needed his wife to show him the way. Hashirama agreed that such an anomaly would make it obvious something was off, although he was still of the private opinion that it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world for other people to know what was happening. It wasn’t like they were the first people to ever get caught up in the mad consequences of his brother’s experiments.

When they arrived Hashirama looked up and down the street to make sure no one was watching before barging right in without knocking. Madara was his best friend; he hadn’t knocked on the other man’s door since the village was built and they’d finally had a chance to pick up where they left off at the river so long ago.

Unfortunately it seemed like he might have to rethink this particular habit.

Neither Madara nor Tobirama seemed able to do more than stare at him in shocked horror – which was fine since Hashirama wasn’t able to do more than the same. He was having a difficult time processing the sight of them with half their clothes removed and their limbs so tangled it was hard to tell what belonged to who. Oddly, Tobirama seemed more inclined to stare at Mito than him. For some reason that incensed him.

“What in chakra’s name is going on here!?” he demanded.

“The hell’s it look like, witch?” Madara turned to sneer at him and Hashirama gasped.

“Don’t you sneer at me, young man! Unhand my brother!”

That certainly caught the man’s attention. Madara recoiled in confusion. “Your brother? This is _his_ brother!”

“And that’s me!” Hashirama shouted with a stamp of his foot. “So keep your paws to yourself! How dare you sneak around behind my back like this?!”

In his anger he missed the way Tobirama’s eyes narrowed dangerously as he straightened, uncaring for the swathes of pale skin exposed by his open clothing. When he spoke his voice was low and warning and still Hashirama was too distracted to notice. “Brother. Mito. Have you been playing in my things again?”

“Maybe you should keep your house clean,” he huffed. “All she did was touch one paper and poof!”

“You’re the she,” Madara pointed out, visibly even more confused.

“No I’m the he! He’s the she! Or the…that’s not me! I’m me! UGH, Tobi can you please just fix this? I’m tired of having breasts, they’re heavy!”

A yelp escaped him when Tobirama stood up completely, both hands coming up to cover his eyes and prevent him from seeing things he really didn’t need to see. When he peeked through his fingers Madara was looking back and forth between the oddly animated body of Mito and the worryingly quiet body of Hashirama, confused and suspicious but clearly not having reached the ultimate conclusion yet. Tobirama cleared the matter up rather nicely by striding across the room to crash his first down on ‘Mito’s’ head.

“What is wrong with you? How many times must I tell you not to touch anything of mine if you don’t know what it is?”

“It wasn’t me!” Hashirama protested.

Tobirama snorted with disbelief – well-earned but unfair considering this time it was the truth – then stormed out of the room only to come back a moment later with ink and paper. “I’ll reverse this only because I can’t be bothered to deal with it any more than I have to but _both_ of you are getting removed from my wards, damn it. That seal was experimental! It wasn’t finished! You’re lucky I don’t make you stay this way so I can run tests on the results!”

Shuddering with horror at the very thought, Hashirama did his best not to squirm as they all waited for Tobirama to draw out the seal that would send everyone back in to the body they were meant to occupy. Mito helped by sending him sharp looks each time he began to fiddle with her perfectly manicured nails – which, he discovered as he fiddled when she wasn’t looking, were _fake_. If they had a moment after this was over he very much hoped he remembered to ask what they were made out of. If he had fake nails then he could chew his real ones without Tobirama badgering him about looking professional.

“Alright, this should do.” At last his brother stood up to blow gently on the paper he had covered in ink. “I want you to pay very close attention to how it feels to revert back because I’m going to need you to describe it to me in detail.”

“What if it hurts?” Hashirama pouted.

“I certainly hope so,” Tobirama said callously.

With no further ado he tossed the seal down on the table and waved for both of them to touch it. Hashirama made sure to send him the most betrayed expression he could muster up when he still wasn’t wearing his own face, uncertain how well it worked. Mito wasn’t exactly used to people doing anything other than precisely what she wanted them to.

For almost a full second after he touched the seal Hashirama thought perhaps it had been drawn incorrectly since nothing seemed to be happening – and then something happened. It felt like being physically pulled out of his own body inch by inch and stuffed back in to another that at least fit better. Having experienced this same feeling earlier Hashirama turned to make sure his wife was okay as soon as he was able to figure out how to communicate with his hands again.

It felt incredible to be back in the right shape, to see the world from the right height and look down instead of up when he spoke to people. Mito was obviously used to it so it wasn’t that it hurt his neck or anything but it certainly had been annoying. He did briefly mourn the lack of clarity in the world, though. A visit to the optometrist was certainly due soon.

“That feels…much better,” Mito said quietly. Hashirama nodded in agreement.

“You know I love every part of you, my dear, but I prefer not to be a part of it all myself. Experiencing you from the outside is quite enough.” He chuckled easily, though the sound faded off in to a squeak when he saw the expression on his brother’s face. “Why are you smiling like that?”

“Am I smiling? Tobirama asked.

“Well, no, I suppose not. You’re just…showing me your teeth. It’s really creepy and you look like an animal about to go hunt its prey and I don’t like it.”

His worry increased as that feral expression grew wider until his brother told him very softly, “Run.”

Snatching his wife by the hand, Hashirama did just that. It was a joy to be able to run with his own legs – although he did not appreciate the way his feet seemed determined to take smaller steps and his brain kept reminding him to have a little dignity. What good would dignity do him if Tobirama caught up to them and exacted revenge for what he clearly saw as a terrible violation of privacy? It wasn’t like they had meant to do anything to his precious research!

Only when they had fled nearly halfway across the village did Mito finally pull him to a stop, windswept and visibly disgruntled by it. Hashirama cringed and frantically tried to help straighten her hair.

“Stop. Have you failed to notice that we are not being pursued?”

“Eh? Oh, I suppose we’re not. That’s weird. Well why did he tell us to run then?” Mito lifted one eyebrow as though he were supposed to be making some sort of connection. “I don’t get it. What? Stop looking at me like that!”

“When was the last time he fixed a problem that you created with so little fuss without at least letting you suffer for a little while first?”

That eyebrow stayed up and Hashirama pursed his lips. He could practically feel it judging him for not picking up on what she was trying to say fast enough. And then finally the pieces clicked. “Oh. Oooh. Ew! He just wanted us gone so he and Madara could go back to – no! That isn’t allowed!” He spun on his heel with every intention of marching back towards the Uchiha district but Mito caught him by the collar and pulled him up short.

“Do you really want to walk in on that twice?” she asked.

“Ah. You’re right.” His arms crossed petulantly. “That’s all I’m going to be able to think about now.”

Mito finally lowered her judgmental eyebrow and pressed close to him, pulling him further along the deserted path they had been fleeing down before they stopped. “I’m sure I can find something else to occupy your thoughts.”

“Oh?”

“I noticed several parts of you that were deliciously sensitive when I was trapped in there and I would very much like to take advantage of that knowledge.” Her words were casual but the salacious wink afterwards, the vixen side of her only he ever got to see, that was all he needed to cast all other thoughts out of his mind in favor of what she offered.

“Darling, you can take advantage of me anytime,” he said.

His wife gave him a wicked look, traipsing away up the path, and Hashirama scrambled to follow after. Of course the possibilities occurred to him only now when it was too late. Scurrying after Mito, he wondered if Tobirama would be willing to show him how that seal worked whenever he managed to perfect it.

Doing a few experiments of his own suddenly sounded like a great deal of fun.


End file.
